CHAPTER VII

LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF ETHICS IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

Hartley, Holbach. Devotion as Enlightened Egoism

MODERN times find world- and life-affirmation so self-evident that they feel no need to give them a sure foundation, and to deepen them, by thought about the world and life. Pessimism they brush aside as reactionary folly, without suspecting how deep down into thought it has sent its roots.

They do, however, see the necessity of establishing the nature of the ethical. How do they proceed to do this?

That the ethical means action directed to promoting the common good is their firm belief from the first, and they are safe from the fate of ancient thought, viz. sticking fast in the mud of resignation while trying to give the ethical a proper foundation. Instead of that they have to answer the question how the unegoistic makes it appearance beside the egoistic, and in what inner relation they stand to each other.

A performance now begins like that which went on after the appearance of Socrates, only the task is proposed this time not by an individual but by the spirit of the time. Another attempt is made to consider the ethical problem in isolation, as if it consisted in reflexions on the relation of the individual to himself and to society, these having no need to settle their position with regard to ultimate questions of the meaning of the world and of life. The ethical problem seems, too, to be a much easier one than it was then, because world-affirmation and activity directed towards the general welfare no longer have to be proved, but appear among the presuppositions which are taken for granted.

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There are three ways in which the relations between the egoistic and the altruistic can be made clear. Either one assumes that the egoistic in the thought of the individual is automatically converted into the altruistic by consistent meditation. Or one supposes the altruistic to have its beginning in the thought of society and thence to pass over into the convictions of the individual. Or one retires to the position that egoism and altruism are both among the original endowments of human nature. All three explanations are attempted, each with most varied arguments. They are not always carried to a conclusion without intermixture, and with many thinkers there is interplay of one with another.

The attempt to deduce devotion to the common welfare from egoism by psychological considerations is made in the most systematic way by David Hartley (1705-1757)_(_12_)_ and Dietrich von Holbach (1723-1789)._(_13_)_

Hartley, a theologian who betook himself to the practice of medicine, claims to see in altruism a purposive ennoblement of original selfishness which comes into play under the influence of rational thought. The much-reviled Holbach ascribes its origin to the fact that the individual, if he rightly understands his own interest, will always form his conception of it in connection with the interest of society, and therefore direct his activities to the latter as well.

Both attempt to carry up their building, so far as it goes, with materialistic considerations and then to roof it with idealist ones. But neither with the coarser nor with the finer considerations nor with both together can the psychological derivation of altruism from egoism produce any convincing result.

The coarser ones do not carry us very far. It is acknowledged, [pg 073] of course, that the prosperity of society depends upon the moral disposition of its members and that the better the moral condition of society the better is the individual’s expectation of prosperity. But it does not follow that the individual becomes more moral, the better he understands his own interests. The mutual relation between him and society is not of such a character that he derives benefit from the latter just in proportion as he himself by his moral conduct helps to establish its prosperity. If the majority of its members are with short-sighted egoism intent only on their own good, then the man who acts with wider outlook makes sacrifices from which there is no prospect of gain for himself, even if the best happens and they are not lost without benefiting the community. If, on the other hand, through the moral conduct of the majority of its members the condition of society is favourable, the individual profits by it even if he fails to behave towards it as morality demands. By conduct which disregards both past and future, he will carve for himself an unduly big share of personal prosperity out of the prosperity of the community, milking the cow which the rest feed. The influence of the individual on the prosperity of the community and the reaction of social prosperity on that of the individual do not stand in a simple relation to each other which acts equally in both directions. The consideration, therefore, that egoism, rightly understood, will oblige the individual to resolve on activity which is directed to promoting the common good, is a ship which sails well, but leaks.

The psychological derivation of altruism from egoism must, then, in some way or other, make an appeal to the self-sacrifice of the individual. This it does by inducing him to consider that in happiness there is a spiritual element as well as a material. Man needs (it is said) not only external prosperity, but to be respected by others and to be satisfied with himself, and he can have this double experience only when he concerns himself about the [pg 074] prosperity of others. Even Holbach, who tries to be inexorably matter-of-fact, lets these considerations speak loudly.

The attempt is made, therefore, above the prolonged bass note of the conception of happiness derived from ordinary egoism, to modulate into the spiritualized conception of it.

The path which this attempt has to follow runs parallel to that which led the successors of Socrates into the abyss of the paradoxical. In order to get from egoism into altruism and so think out to a conclusion the ethic of the rationally-pleasurable, the Epicureans wished to use the same scale of values for spiritual and material pleasure alike. The only result was that their ethic transformed itself into resignation. Now again, in modern times, and again for the sake of ethics, spiritual happiness is to be regarded as happiness in the same way as material happiness is, and here again the result is a paradox.

Material and spiritual happiness are not so related that the one can find its continuation in the other. If the second is for the sake of ethics called in with the first, it does not strengthen the first, but paralyses it. The man who does earnestly try to guide himself by the light of spiritual as well as material happiness, ends by finding that the recognition accorded him by his fellow-men, which at first seemed to him to make almost the whole of spiritual happiness, becomes more and more meaningless. It is to him a miserable lump of solder which drops down between material and spiritual happiness without being able to fasten them together. More and more exclusively he experiences spiritual happiness as the condition in which he is at one with himself and therefore can justifiably accord himself a certain amount of self-appreciation.

Spiritual happiness is sufficient unto itself. Either the man is led to resolve on ethical conduct because he expects from it a moulding of the outward circumstances of his being which will bring him profit and pleasure; or he chooses it because he finds his happiness in obeying his inner compulsion to ethical action. In the latter case he [pg 075] has left far behind him all calculations about the interdependence of his morality and his material happiness. The fact that he is a moral man is in itself his happiness, even though it land him in the most disadvantageous situations.

But if spiritual happiness can never be welded into union with material, it is useless trouble to try to depict altruism as an ennobling of egoism.

If the ordinary conception of pleasure, that it may be brought into union with ethics, is submitted to a process of refining, it ends by being refined away. In ancient ethics, in which the refining is done under the influence of an ethical system which is definitely egoistic, it transforms itself into the pleasure of being without pleasure, and allows ethics to end in resignation. In modern ethics, in which the pleasure to be refined is under the influence of altruism, it works itself up into an irrational and immaterialistic enthusiasm. In both cases there is the same paradoxical proceeding, only that in one case it goes in the negative direction, in the other in the positive.

Whenever, then, thought wishes to conceive ethics as springing from pleasure or happiness, it arrives at resignation or enthusiasm, at spiritualised egoistic or at spiritualised expansive conduct.

There is no way in which natural pleasure can, in really deep thinking, be brought into connexion with ethics.

Hobbes, Locke, Helvetius, Bentham

The explanation that altruism is a principle of action which the individual takes over from society is to be found expressed in characteristic ways by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679),_(_14_)_ John Locke (1632-1704),_(_15_)_ Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)_(_16_)_ and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)._(_17_)_

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Hobbes represents the State as commissioned and empowered by the majority of the individual citizens to engage the whole body in action for the common advantage. In this way alone, he asserts, is it possible to realise the common good in which the egoism of individuals finds the highest possible degree of prosperity. Left to themselves, men would never be able to get free from their short-sighted egoism, and would, therefore, miss prosperity. Their only possible course, then, is to join in setting up an authority which will drive them into altruism.

With external means only, however, organized society cannot engage the individual in all the activities which are needed for the common good. It must strive to ensure its power over him by means of spiritual conviction as well. Locke takes this need into consideration. According to him it is God and society together who force altruism upon the individual by appealing at the same time to his egoism. These two authorities have, that is to say (as our reason enables us to recognize), so ordered the course of things that actions beneficial to society are rewarded, and those injurious to it are punished. God has at his disposal rewards and punishments of endless duration. Society works in two different ways: through the power given to it by the criminal law, and through the law of public opinion in which it uses praise and blame as spiritual means of compulsion. Man being guided both by pleasure and absence of it, he manages to accommodate himself to those rules which defend the general good so effectually, and he thereby becomes moral.

In spite of all their differences on single points, Hobbes and Locke agree in having this external conception of ethics. The essential point of distinction between them is [pg 077] that with Hobbes society alone plies the whip, while with Locke God and society handle it together.

Helvetius, who belonged to a family which had migrated from the Palatinate into France, is more refined and more inward. In his life as a farmer of taxes and a property-owner, he always tried, along with his noble-minded wife, to act with kindness and justice as he explains them in his book. It is clear to him that ethics means somehow or other enthusiastic action, that is, action which springs out of feeling._(_18_)_ Society cannot, therefore, force these virtues into the individual; it can only educate him into them, and it does in fact apply all the means and devices which are at its disposal to influence his egoism in their direction. Above all it makes good use of his striving to win recognition and fame. The praise which it pours on that which is “good” in its own sense of the word is for the mass of men the strongest inducement to take up work for its interests. Helvetius would perhaps have offered a less external conception of how ethical action is realized, if he had not, with the best intentions, taken so much trouble to depict morality as something which can be taught.

In the view that morality is enthusiastic action to which the individual is roused by society, Bentham agrees entirely with Helvetius, but he carries it through in a much deeper way. Out of the _Romanza_ he makes a hymn.

The part played by society in bringing morality into existence cannot, according to Bentham, be emphasized too strongly. In vehement words he opposes the view that the human conscience can decide between good and evil. Nothing can be left to subjective feeling. Man is truly moral only when he receives his ethics at the hand of society and works them out with ardour.

But if society is to decide about ethics, it must first bring order into its own ethical views, and therefore, says Bentham, must learn to combine clear and definite notions [pg 078] with its presentation of the general good. That done, it must make up its mind to apply this principle with absolute consistency as a foundation for legislation and the establishment of ethical standards, excluding all considerations of a different character. A “moral arithmetic” should be constructed which allows the calculating in correct utility values of all decisions that have to be made.

Dealing in a dry, practical way with all cases of penal legislation, and of establishment of standards by the moral law, Bentham then shows that the principle of the greatest good of the greatest number is applicable in all of them, and guides us safely and accurately in questions of good and evil.

“Moral philosophy, in its general meaning, is the theory underlying the art of so directing the actions of men that there is produced the greatest possible amount of happiness.”

It is legislation that decides what moral actions the community can order to be performed, and if it is to exert an educative influence it must be humane through and through.

“But there are many actions which, though useful to the community, legislation may not command. There are even many injurious actions which it may not forbid, although moral philosophy does so. Legislation is, in a word, a circle with the same centre as moral philosophy, but its circumference is smaller.”

When law ceases to be available, there is nothing that society can do except be continually putting before the individual personally how greatly he contributes to his own welfare by furthering that of others. Bentham does not make it do this with educative guile as does Helvetius. Society appeals to his feeling for truth. It throws itself at his feet and entreats him for the sake of the general welfare to listen to the voice of reason. Thus the dry way in which Bentham writes about ethics has in it something peculiarly impressive, and explains the powerful influence which this [pg 079] eccentric member of the House which looks across the Park at Westminster has exercised all over the world through the individuals who were inspired by him.

The most influential parts of his work are those in which he intensifies the seriousness of men and sharpens their outlook by leading them to reflect not only on the immediate but also on the more distant consequences of anything done or left undone, and, further, not only on the material consequences but on the spiritual ones. It does one good to note the courage with which this fanatic for utility ventures to represent material blessings as the foundation of spiritual ones.

Bentham is one of the most powerful moralists who have ever appeared in the world, but his mistakes are as great as his insight. The latter is shown in this, that he conceives morality as a kind of enthusiasm. His mistake is that he thinks he must guarantee the rightness of this enthusiasm by making it nothing higher than a judgement of society which is taken over by the individual.

This compels us to rank Bentham with Hobbes, Locke, and Helvetius, although in other respects he stands high above them. He, like them, makes morality arise outside the individual. He, like them, in order to find his explanation of the altruistic, puts out of action the ethical personality which is in man, and, to compensate for this, raises society to an ethical personality that he may then by a transmission of energy connect individuals with this central power-station. The difference is only that with the other commonplace moralists the individual is a marionette directed by society on ethical principles, whereas in Bentham he carries out with deep conviction the movements suggested to him.

Ethical thought falls from one paradox into another. If, as in antiquity, it thinks out a system in which the activity that must be directed to the common good is not sufficiently represented, it arrives at ethics which are no longer ethics, and ends in resignation. If it assumes and starts from such an activity directed to the common good, [pg 080] it arrives at an ethic in which there is no ethical personality. It is, strange to say, unable to mark out the middle course and let an activity which is directed to the promotion of the common good spring out of the ethical personality itself.

Altruism as a natural quality. Hume, Adam Smith

The explanations of altruism as an ennobling of egoism which has a spontaneous origin through the activity of reason, or which is brought into existence through the influence of society, are obviously unsatisfying both psychologically and ethically. Utilitarianism must therefore necessarily come to admit that altruism is somehow or other given independently in human nature side by side with egoism. It is true that it always appears there as the backward twin-brother who can be reared only with the most careful nursing, and therefore the upholders of the third alternative given above appeal to the considerations used for the first two. They continually allow the capacity for altruistic feeling to be exposed to the influence of considerations which seem calculated to let egoism discharge its waters into altruism. The two first views are taken into service as wet-nurses for the third. David Hume (1711-1776)_(_19_)_ and Adam Smith (1723-1790)_(_20_)_ must be named here.

Hume agrees with the other utilitarians in allowing that the principle of seeking to promote the common good must be accepted as the dominant principle of morality. Whether actions are good or bad is decided solely by whether they are directed towards the production of general happiness [pg 081] or not. There is nothing which is in itself ethical or unethical.

To the idea that ethics can have as their object the self-perfecting of the individual as little weight is given by Hume as by the other utilitarians. Like them, he opposes asceticism and other life-denying demands of Christian ethics, because he cannot discover in them anything profitable for the general welfare.

But what makes men decide to work together for the common good? Consistent utilitarians answer: Reflexion about what the common good means. Of this one-sidedness Hume is not guilty, because he does not find it to be in accord with psychological facts. It is not out of high-minded reflexion, he asserts, but out of direct sympathy that the emotions and actions of benevolence arise. The virtues which serve the common good have their origin in feeling. We can resolve on acts of love only because there is in us an elementary feeling for the happiness of men, and a dislike of seeing them in misery. We become moral through sympathy.

It would not have been a big step further to explain this sympathy as a form of the egoistic need of happiness, more or less through the assumption that in order to be really happy a man must see happiness all round him. But Hume does not use such roads as that. He does not aim at constructive thought but at stating facts, and it is enough for him that direct sympathy with other men be proved to be a principle inherent in human nature. We have to stop somewhere or other, he says in one place, in our search for causes. In every science there are certain general principles beyond which there is no more general principle still for us to discover.

Among the elements which are effective in developing moral feeling, Hume attributes great importance to the love of fame. This keeps us considering ourselves in the light in which we wish to appear in the eyes of others, for the effort to secure the respect of others is a potent educator in virtue. On this point he thinks like Frederick the Great, from whom comes the sentence: “The love of fame [pg 082] is innate in noble souls; you have only to arouse it and urge it on, and men who till then merely vegetated, will seem to you, when explained by this happy instinct, to be changed into demi-gods.”_(_21_)_

Adam Smith wishes to trace out the idea of sympathy in all its manifestations, and in doing so he discovers that our capacity for sympathy covers more than participation in the weal or woe of others. It brings us, he says, to a community of thought with those who are doing something. We feel ourselves directly attracted or repelled by the actions of others and the motives at the back of them. Our ethics are the product of these sympathetic experiences. We come in time to take care that an impartial third party can justify and sympathise with the mainspring and the tendency of our actions. Innate sympathy not only with the actions but also with the experience of others is thus the beneficent regulator of the behaviour of men to one another. This feeling God has implanted in human nature that it may keep men faithful to work for the common good.

How far this somewhat artificial extension of the notion of sympathy through the doctrine of the impartial third party really means a step forward beyond Hume we may leave undiscussed.

In his famous work, _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_ (1776), Adam Smith founds this prosperity purely upon the entirely free and intelligent activity of egoism. About the part to be played by ethics in economic questions he says nothing. Economic development he leaves to be determined by its own internal laws, and is confident that, if these are left a free course, the result will be favourable. Adam Smith, the moral philosopher, is also, because he is endowed with a rationalistic optimism, the founder of the _laissez-faire_ form of economic [pg 083] doctrine, that of the Manchester school, as it is called. He led industry and commerce in their struggle for liberation from the petty and injurious tutelage of authority. To-day, when economic life among all peoples is again delivered over to the most short-sighted ideas of authorities who never think in terms of economics, we can measure the greatness of his performance.

Like Adam Smith, Bentham also is an adherent of the principle of freedom in economic life. At the same time he has an ethical conception of society, and demands from it that in a spirit of progress it shall help to level out as far as possible the differences between rich and poor.

What, then, do Hume and Adam Smith mean for ethics? They introduce into the treatment of them the element of empirical psychology. They believe that through the value they give to the significance of sympathy they are giving a natural foundation to utilitarianism, though in reality this psychology begins to correct it and to undermine its position. There hovers before the mind of utilitarianism the great conception that ethics are a result of reflexion. It thinks to make men moral by keeping their attention fixed on the deep nature of ethics and the necessity of the ends at which it aims.

This conception draws its life from the conviction that thought has been given complete control over the will. The absolute rationality of the ethical is the foundation on which it builds, and if it is not to get quite bewildered about its own nature, it cannot allow itself to recognize as presuppositions of the ethical, facts which are given it by psychology and cannot be verified independently.

With Hume and Adam Smith, who trace ethics back to something given in human nature which resembles instinct, there crops up the problem how ethics can be something natural, and at the same time something subordinate to thought, for that they are subordinate to thought has to be assumed even by the champions of this psychological utilitarianism. If they were nothing but the exercise of an instinct, they would not be capable of widening and [pg 084] deepening, nor could they be imparted to all and sundry with convincing force. Yet how is it conceivable that thought influences the sympathetic instinct? What have the two in common that the work of one can be carried further by the other?

If Hume and Adam Smith had suspected the far-reaching character of this great problem of ethics which they brought into the field of discussion, they would have had to go on and settle the extent and the depth of this sympathy which they adopted in their scheme, in order to understand how it continues to function in the domain of thought.

But they fail to notice the far-reaching character of what they lay down, and believe they have done nothing but give by means of psychology an explanation of altruism which is superior to these currents. The spirit of the time, in its wonderful capacity for holding various ideas side by side, takes possession of their view, and the popular utilitarianism now confidently appeals to it as declaring that altruism is to be conceived as a rational ennobling of egoism, as a result of the influence of society, and in addition as a manifestation of a natural instinct.

It is, really, only in appearance that the psychological conception of ethics imparts new life to utilitarianism. It is rather a consumption germ which the latter absorbs. The establishment of a natural element in ethics, when the consequences of it begin to make themselves felt, can only end in its devouring rationalist utilitarianism, as becomes evident in the nineteenth century when biological thought becomes influential in ethics. The funeral procession of rationalist utilitarianism begins to assemble with Hume and Adam Smith, though it is a long time before the coffin is taken to the cemetery.

The English ethic of self-perfecting

Against the utilitarians, who would derive from the content of the moral the essential nature of it, and the [pg 085] obligation to morality, the “Intellectualists” and the “Intuitionists” enter the lists. The empirical derivation of ethics seems to them to be an endangering of the majesty of the moral. Morality—this is the thought before their minds—is a striving after perfection, and this develops itself in us because it is implanted in us by nature. Action for the common advantage does not by any means constitute ethics; it is only a manifestation of the struggle after self-perfecting.

To this deeper and more comprehensive conception of ethics, however, the Intellectualists and Intuitionists do not give correct expression. For that they are still too much entangled in a lifeless and semi-scholastic philosophizing.

Their chief strength lies in their showing up of the weaknesses of the foundation which Hobbes and Locke give to ethics, and to these they principally devote themselves, bringing to their task a great deal that is correct about the directly and absolutely binding character of the moral law. That the meaning of the moral is not to be found merely in the useful character of the actions inspired by it but also in the self-perfecting of the agent which is effected by them, and that morality presupposes a moral personality, is emphasized by them in many happy turns of expression.

When, however, the task before them is to describe exactly in what way men carry in them the idea of the good as a force which works effectively upon their character, the Intellectualists and the Intuitionists land themselves in a psychologizing which is sometimes ingenious, but often artificial and commonplace. They occupy themselves with logical distinctions instead of investigating in a practical fashion the nature of man. Instead of really developing the problem in answer to the innovators, they work at it with data taken from an out-of-date philosophy. They hark back largely to Plato, and again they argue largely, anxiously or unconsciously, not as philosophers, but as theologians.

On individual points they diverge from each other, and [pg 086] attack each other’s positions according as they would have the foundations of the ethical more intellectualist, or more sentimental and mystical, or more theological.

The majority of these anti-utilitarians belong to the Cambridge Platonizing school. We must name here Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688),_(_22_)_ Henry More (1614-1687),_(_23_)_ the Rev. Samuel Clarke (1675-1729),_(_24_)_ Bishop Richard Cumberland (1632-1718),_(_25_)_ and William Wollaston (1659-1724)._(_26_)_

According to Cudworth the truths of morality are just as evident as these of mathematics. For More the ethical is an intellectual power of the soul meant for the control of natural impulses. Cumberland finds the moral law given in the reason which has been bestowed upon man by God. Clarke, living in the thought world of Isaac Newton, sees it as the spiritual phenomenon which corresponds to the law of nature. Wollaston defines it as that which is logically right.

Pressed back to their fundamental meaning, these thinkers do nothing but amplify the statement that the ethical is ethical. They assert that the utilitarian view of ethics is pitched too low, but they do not succeed in establishing, in contrast to it, a more exalted principle in such a way that a higher and more comprehensive content of ethics can be derived from it. As to content their ethic does not really differ from that of the utilitarians. It merely lacks the great enthusiastic driving-force which shows itself in the latter. To establish a living ethic of self-perfecting is beyond the capacity of the Intellectualists and the Intuitionists.

What is the inner connexion between the struggle for self-perfecting and action for the common advantage? That [pg 087] is the weighty question of ethics which crops up in the settlement of differences between the utilitarians and their conservative opponents. At first it remains veiled, and it does not come to clear expression till we reach Kant.

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A peculiar position in the ethical thought of the eighteenth century is held by Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)._(_27_)_ He opposes not only the utilitarians, but the Intellectualists and the Intuitionists as well, and tries to secure a mediating position between them. That the content of ethics is utilitarian he openly admits, but he derives the ethical neither from considerations of usefulness nor from the intellect; he places its origin in feeling. At the same time he emphasizes, as does Adam Smith also a few years later, its relationship to the æsthetic.

But the important thing is that he puts forward a living philosophy of nature which connects itself with ethics. He is convinced that harmony reigns in the universe and that man is meant to experience this harmony in himself. Æsthetic feeling and ethical thinking are for him forms of a growing union with the divine life, which struggles to find expression in the spiritual being of man as it does in nature.

With Shaftesbury ethics descend from a rocky mountain range into a luxuriant plain. The utilitarians know as yet nothing of a world. Their ethic is contained in considerations about the relation of the individual to society. The anti-utilitarians have some idea of a world, but not a correct one. They elaborate ethics with a formal theology and a formal philosophizing about the All, but Shaftesbury plants ethical thought in the universe of reality, which he himself contemplates through an idealising optimism, reaching thereby a direct and universal notion of the moral.

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A mysticism based on a philosophy of nature begins to spin its magic threads through European thought. The spirit of the Renaissance rules again, no longer, however, like a raging storm, as in Giordano Bruno, but as a gentle breeze. Shaftesbury thinks pantheistically, more pantheistically than he confesses to himself, but his is not a pantheism which throws his age into struggles about world-views, and comes into conflict with theism. It is the pantheism which rules in Hinduism and in Late Stoicism also; one which is not dangerous, and raises no question of principle, desiring only to be regarded as a vivifying of belief in God.

Shaftesbury exerts also a liberating influence on the spiritual life of his time by giving ethics a much freer attitude towards religion than anyone had ventured to do up to that time. Religion, according to him, has not to give decisions about ethics, but on the contrary must test its own claims to be true by its relation to pure ethical ideas. He even ventures to represent the Christian teaching about rewards and punishment as not consistent with pure ethical considerations. Morality, he says, is pure, only when good has been done simply because it is good.

His optimistic-ethical philosophy of nature is offered by Shaftesbury only as a sketch. He throws out his ideas without proving that they are well founded, and without feeling any necessity for thinking them out to a conclusion. He steps with an easy stride across all problems. What a difference between his philosophy of nature and Spinoza’s! Yet his meets the needs of his time. He offers what is new to it, and what inspires it: ethics bound up with a living world-view.

The belief in progress now clothes itself in a living world-view which really suits it. This is the process which, thanks to Shaftesbury, began in the first decades of the eighteenth century and went on developing till the end of it. Hence the appearance of his writings, which were immediately spread abroad through the whole of Europe, [pg 089] is the great event for the spiritual life of the eighteenth century. Voltaire, Diderot, Lessing, Condorcet, Moses Mendelssohn, Wieland, Herder, and Goethe too, are under his influence, and he dominates popular thought completely. Hardly ever has any man had so direct and so powerful an influence on the formation of the world-view of his time as the invalid whose life ended at Naples when he was only forty-two.

Direct continuators of Shaftesbury’s ethic are found in Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747)_(_28_)_ and Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752),_(_29_)_ but they take from it just that soft indefiniteness which gives it its charm and its strength. Hutcheson, who strongly emphasizes theology’s independence of ethics, the relationship of the latter to the æsthetic, and their utilitarian content, stands nearer to his teacher than does Butler, who does not go as far in his welcome of utilitarianism, and also opposes, from the Christian standpoint, the optimism of Shaftesbury’s world-view.

But Shaftesbury’s true successor is J. G. Herder (1744-1803). In his _Ideas on the Philosophy of Human History_ (4 vols., 1784-1791), he carries the optimistic-ethical nature-philosophy on into a corresponding philosophy of history.

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